By Randy MacDonald,
Chairman of the Mater Dei Prep Board of Trustees
‘Tis the season for miracles. I think back many Christmases ago and I remember having a guest lecturer at Boston College: Leonard Nimoy. I believe in his quote, “The miracle is this – the more we share, the more we have.”
My mother taught second grade in Keansburg and my father sold life insurance door-to-door, yet they were two of the richest people I knew. Why? Because they were part of a community. At Mater Dei Prep and St. Mary’s parish in Middletown, life has always been about sharing.
I graduated from Mater Dei in 1974. Forty-one years later, in February 2015, the school was on the verge of closing. It only took a matter of weeks for the miracles to begin. The community of Mater Dei Prep rallied to raise over $1.5 million to support the school. Then we experienced the second miracle: The Diocese of Trenton accepted our exhaustive application to privatize the school.
I can’t help but believe the beloved former pastor of St. Mary’s parish, Msgr. Bulman, had a hand in our next miracle. Msgr. played third base for the St. Mary’s South Amboy High School baseball team in the 1930s. In June of 2015, Cardinal McCarrick High School in South Amboy (formerly St. Mary’s South Amboy) was also shutting its doors. Over the next two days a hundred families arrived at Mater Dei Prep asking for help. More than 50 Cardinal McCarrick students ultimately transferred to Mater Dei Prep that fall, helping us meet enrollment goals. Included in those transfers were a few talented basketball players who asked if there was any room at Mater Dei Prep for their former coach. And that led to yet another miracle.
Last spring, down by 18 points with less than two minutes to go in the third quarter against cross-town rivals CBA, the Mater Dei Prep boys’ basketball team performed a miracle, winning the Shore Conference championship, for the first time in school history, by seven points.
While we felt we had most likely exhausted all the novenas prayed for that victory, we found ourselves clutching our rosaries just a few weeks ago, at Kean University. A well-coached and talented football team from south Jersey capitalized on some uncharacteristic mistakes by Mater Dei Prep and tied the state championship game, looking to send it into overtime with only a few seconds remaining. As every boy who ever played backyard football will tell you, the dream is to win the state championship on the final play of the game by executing the “hook and ladder.” Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that play was called, executed to perfection and gave Mater Dei Prep its first ever state football championship.
There have been other, smaller, though no less important, miracles along the way. At Mater Dei Prep, we are raising the next generation of “sharers,” so don’t be surprised if you read about many more miracles in the coming years.
